


How to End the Night

by galacticproportions



Series: Veterans' Affairs [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, I'm really selling it here but I promise there are nice parts, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Politics, Reconciliation, Shower Sex, Some pretentious musings about war and structural trauma, Tough Times, Veterans' affairs, mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8017132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's such a good time, and everyone's so proud and happy of what they've made together and how long they've survived, that no one remarks on the fact that the guest of honor and the life of the party are barely speaking to each other.</p><p>Or: Finn and Poe's first real fight, over twenty years in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to End the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts).



> This follows closely on "Make My Bed and Light the Light," and grew out of a conversation I had with orchis in the comments of some story or other. So orchis, this is for you, with affection, and with gratitude for thinking through this world with me. 
> 
> The middle of this story is sad and difficult, but don't give up--they don't.

For reasons nobody remembers, 23 is a sacred number to both of the major cultures on Fohn 3. It's the number of gifts you give a new baby, the number of prayers you say for the dead, the age of maturity. So when the ex-stormtrooper sanctuary in Roel reaches its 23rd local year, it seems only natural to have a party.

23 years is an eyeblink in the vastness of the galaxy, but it's long enough for the original inhabitants and the incomers to have learned from and grown toward each other. Children in Roel learn a version of what was once stormtrooper handsign, some before speaking in words, or instead of it; most of them learn it from older kids rather than adults. When during the party they set aside time to mourn those who can't be there, many of them because they took their own lives, ex-troopers make the formal gestures and say the 23 prayers.

The mourning doesn't slow the party down much. A few people have come a very long way to celebrate: Notta the Stormtrooper Jedi is there, her lightly graying hair in a starburst of short twists and her gap-toothed smile warming the room, floating snacks over to a handful of awed children. Sixty, the former coordinator, is long dead, but his twin sons are back, one with a toddler in a sling on his back and one with his guide goat-lizard in a harness. Finn himself is there, the rebel, the ex-troopers' representative in Parliament, the reason this place exists; he's sitting with a few people who have been in the sanctuary town since its beginning, with the infant granddaughter of one of them on his lap, listening to their stories and absently stroking the fuzz of her hair.

There are people in this room who are still angry at Poe Dameron for what he did during the war, but there are also plenty of people happy to see him. Plenty more have only the vaguest idea who he is but know the songs he's playing and singing, dance tunes at first that have everyone out on the floor or at least tapping a foot or hand or whatever they can move, then lullabies as the children in the room start to lose speed, and finally drinking songs once the kids have been settled in their dorms or their parents' beds or on piles of coats and blankets on the floor of the creche. Between songs he accepts the drinks that people bring to him, lets an elder scoop him up for a quick bump and grind on the dance floor, looks with warm interest at holos back from when the compound was new and everyone in it was much younger.

It's such a good time, and everyone's so proud and happy of what they've made together and how long they've survived, that no one remarks on the fact that the guest of honor and the life of the party are barely speaking to each other.

 

*

 

According to one way of thinking, it started when they were hanging clean clothes to dry in the courtyard, including Finn's dress clothes because the Parliament was about to convene again. It was a bright breezy morning, still cool, at the height of their moon's autumn. Normally this is a chore they both like—it seemed unsanitary to Finn at first but Poe talked him around by pointing out how efficient it is, and if they're both home when they hang the clothes they can catch each other's eye and touch hands accidentally-on-purpose, which never gets old.

But that day Poe was withdrawn, quiet without being still, in a way that seemed different from his usual post-mission drop. Finn had already said once, “Let me know if you wanna talk about whatever it is,” and now he was just waiting, but the silence was starting to get loud.

“Hand me that jacket thing, there's a weird way you have to hang it so it doesn't crease,” Finn said, and Poe said, “The planetary government on Kjalla just used bioweapons on an entire city in opposition territory. Not even an opposition stronghold. No armory, no military role at all. Just a regular city, and now two-thirds of everyone in it is dying of enteric fever because a group of people from their region submitted a list of requests—not even demands, _requests—_ for changes in agricultural practices.”

Finn waited.

“When is it big enough?” Poe demanded. “When does it matter enough?”

“You want me to bring it up in sessions.”

“Yes. Yes, I want you to bring it up in sessions.” Poe was gesticulating, waving a forgotten pair of Finn's drawers like a semaphore. “This could be the test case, it could set a precedent. What they're doing is _overtly_ hideous, it's wantonly cruel, if it were happening between worlds it'd be a no-brainer, and there's nothing onplanet that's big enough to stop it.” The energy sank out of him, away between the courtyard stones. “They're gonna give up,” he said. “I could tell when I was there, I could smell it. They're desperate and they're determined and they're brave, but no one can be brave forever. And then the government will go back to doing whatever it wants—it's indentured servitude with a few fun elements like amputations built in, by the way. Meanwhile, they're denying all responsibility for the plague, they're saying it's the result of the alternative farming methods. And with the city quarantined--”

Finn lifted the underdrawers gently out of Poe's hand and pinned them to the line. He said, “I'll bring it up. But you have to understand, it would mean totally changing what the Parliament does, what their purview is.”

“Of course I fucking understand that, that's what I _want,_ you think I--” He stopped. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Sweetheart, I'm sorry,” and he ducked under the clothesline to reach out to Finn, settle a hand at his waist. “I've been trying not to get like this, not put it on you, it's just--”

“I love how you are,” Finn said, and meant, though he was filled with misgivings. Both of them were right, but not about the same things, and that was always a recipe for trouble. He pushed it down; he could at least see how the sessions went. “You wanna finish this up and go inside,” he said, “and fuck me before we wash the sheets?”

 

*

 

Three days later he, his two aides Tomorrow and Rusty, and his apprentice, the child of an ex-trooper and a former Resistance engineer, flew to the world where Parliament was sitting. He carried out his own mandate: an entire system was trying to write discriminatory labor laws that affected ex-troopers, and incidentally every other veteran in their system, and he reminded everyone of why that would not be happening and of the specific subsection of the specific Accord that explained why it would not be happening. Someone tried it every few years.

Finn knew that in another two generations or so, the need for what he did would disappear. His successor would probably be the last representative of ex-troopers in the Parliament of the League of Worlds, because in one more person's lifetime there would probably be no more ex-troopers. He and his closest aides had been working for a few years now to put in place something for the children of ex-troopers and for people who'd been kidnapped for the trooper program but had just started training and conditioning when the war ended, and that was almost ready to roll out. They'd have to get it on the docket, and there'd be motions and countermotions, and... he understands Poe's impatience with these proceedings. It's not just that Poe likes to go fast; these feel slow even to someone who likes to go slow.

Meetings for the subcommittees he was on had of course been scheduled for ages, but he did something he'd never done before, though he knew other representatives did it all the time: he held an unofficial gathering at the inn where he was staying, inviting people he thought might be sympathetic. A sector rep who's said a few things in his hearing that indicate her impatience with the apparently endemic civil wars in the worlds she's responsible for. A system rep who's expressed frustration with the behavior of homegrown mining conglomerates on xir unusually ore-rich planets. And the person who represents exactly one habitable moon, since the two full-sized rock planets in the system drove themselves into runaway greenhouse effects not long after the Clone Wars.

People expect food at these things, so he asked Rusty to pull up a list of dietary restrictions from the worlds and cultures of his would-be allies. Then he and Tuve the apprentice walked through the market together, choosing fruits and roasted grubs and little dried things that Tuve, whose parents settled on a largely aquatic world, assured him were made of seaweed. They were doing beautifully, astonishingly poised for such a young person and all attention when something was going on that they could learn from—he reminded himself to actually _tell_ them that, not keep it to himself--and his aides were more than competent. Finn still wished Poe were here, this being the kind of thing he's good at, the intimate, the unofficial, the implicit, the social. Finn learned it too late, or maybe he never would've been good at it.

The meeting at the inn was a failure. A polite, regretful, friendly failure, but a failure. Too much inertia, they said, especially considering the objections. Too far beyond the Parliament's mandate; too much potential for infighting and corruption and special interests and distraction. Pointing a rathtar gun at a tooka, they said. Impossible to handle both relations between worlds and relations within worlds; it would make the work of the Parliament too— _granular_ was the word they used, which also described the feeling of Finn's eyelids by the time they left his rooms.

He was disappointed in himself, but this just wasn't the kind of thing you could do alone, and the support wasn't there. Some of their objections seemed like laziness, some seemed surmountable, some he couldn't see a way around. Maybe he'd try once more, with a different group of people—it was too late now, sessions were over and a good third of the reps had already left the system-when the Parliament reconvened.

On the series of transports that took them home, Tuve was full of questions about what had happened, and he forced himself to respond to them. But his skin was already anticipating Poe's touch, like always when he knew he was on his way home.

He'd been able to send a message ahead this time, and the apartment was bright and fragrant, Poe curled on the couch—he can't seem to stop himself from curling up to read, even though it's hell on his knees. He looked up when Finn came in, smiled softly, stretched out an arm. Finn dropped his overnight bag and settled against him.

“Eat first or fuck first?” Poe said in his ear.

Finn grinned. (Months later, the muscles in his face remember the shape of that grin, how easily and naturally it formed, how one side of it pressed into the side of Poe's neck; those muscles feel disused, neglected.) “Shower first, if you come in with me. Then I wanna eat whatever's making the apartment smell like this.”

“All of that can happen.” Poe got to his feet, wincing as he unbent.

The water streamed over them, making Poe's hair into loops and horns, streaking along his spine as he knelt, pooling around their feet. “Oh,” Finn said, and his mouth filled up with water. “Oh--” as Poe switched from mouthing and lipping and stroking to taking him all the way in, reaching up and into him at the same time, keeping him caught and hooked in place. Water trickled into his ears and sound flowed from his mouth, moaning and singing and rising as he came, feeling liquid and whole.

He helped Poe to his feet and kissed him, drinking down his mouth, biting his lip and stroking his cock for him with one hand and keeping him upright with the other arm around his waist. Poe gasped and convulsed in his grip and Finn just kept kissing him, his mouth, his eyes, his neck and shoulder, back to his mouth again.

They dried off and ate dinner, which was delicious but which Finn mostly yawned through, and went to bed with their hair still damp. They fucked their way lazily through the morning, and ate leftovers for breakfast, and then Poe went to try to get his hair to be less amusingly wedge-shaped, and it wasn't until he got back with it mostly tamed that he said, “So how'd it go with, you know, talking about a Parliamentary intervention.”

Finn sighed. He truly hadn't thought about it at all since getting home, probably because he hadn't wanted to. Probably because he knew he was going to have to say what he was about to say. “It's a no-go,” he said, and explained what he'd tried and why. “I think those three really were my best bet, but I'll do some more research and try again next time we convene.”

“Most of the people in that city will be dead in two standard months,” Poe said flatly. “And the ones who aren't--”

“I know. Poe, I know. I can't—I'm trying the things I can think of. But even if they'd agreed to work with me on it, we couldn't have saved those people, I don't even know if it would've happened in time to limit this particular—It's so huge, the Parliament, and it's so slow even when it's working the way it's supposed to. That's why I think it might not be the best for this. A planet or even a sector is speedier, you know, they can twist and turn, I don't know if Parliament could ever get the jump on something happening at that level. But I'm gonna keep trying, at least for a while.”

Poe's smile was clearly strained, though it was a good effort. “Okay,” he said. “I appreciate your trying. Listen, I haven't logged enough hours in atmo this month, I'm gonna go up for a bit.”

“Okay if I come out to the airfield and watch? I didn't schedule anything for today.”

“Sure, if you want,” Poe said, which wasn't like him at all.

The year was turning; Finn's breath hovered visibly, intermittently coming between his eyes and his view of the little two-seater as he craned his neck to see it. Poe's loops and feints were as tight and exhilarating as ever. _Maybe it's fine,_ Finn thought, and followed it up with a slightly disloyal _Maybe this'll help him get it out of his system._ Poe landed and went through postflight and smiled and slung an arm around Finn. They rode the speeder back to the compound together, and everything seemed like it should be okay.

 

*

 

Or you could say it started with the war—which war? Any war, doesn't matter. War changes the people who fight it, the people who run from it, the people caught up in it. It changes everyone those people touch. Everybody knows that, recites it back like an article of faith: _War changes people._ War fused Poe's generosity and recklessness into courage, sharpened his temper and his reflexes, wore away at his sense of self-preservation. War made Finn twice, first into someone as much like a thing as possible, and then into someone who wanted as many people as possible to _be_ people, to be free.

But war (which war? Any war) also made everyone they encounter, every decision that affects them, every shift of power in the galaxy at large or in a dusty side room on the Outer Rim. When anyone tries to exercise their will, to move anything, to set something right, the war in them calls out to the war in everyone else, drags at feelings and choices like a gravity well. It leads them to fight, or to hoard, or to cower; to defend what no one's attacking, to control what could just as well flow freely.

There are counterweights, opposing forces. The Force does that for Rey, Finn knows, and their friendship has grounded them both across time and space. Other people he knows have their faith, or their children, or even their pride in a skill or art. And although he and Poe were each other's reason to fight, almost from the first moment they met, they're also—he's always felt—each other's reason to do more than fight, to be more than _soldier_ or _pilot_ or _operative._ A way to be guided by something other than war, never wholly free of it, but never wholly synonymous with it. The love they make together letting them periodically achieve escape velocity.

But now, many years after the side they were fighting on arguably won, sitting in a room of relative peace and warmth with a bunch of free, tired people as a celebration of their survival winds down, holding a little living presence on his lap and looking across the room at his love, Finn feels like the _war_ is winning.

 

*

 

Everything continued to seem fine without being fine. They ate together, slept together, fixed a clogged drain, hung out more laundry. Finn practiced his Force self-defense, and Poe went flying. Each day they parted to do their respective work. Poe was preparing to respond to a call from a space station that had declared itself a sovereign entity, something new in his experience and something he frankly wasn't sure was in his wheelhouse, so they talked about that, but he also spent more and more time seeking news of Kjalla, trying to get word from his contacts there or trawling the newsfeeds for even the slightest reference.

Finn spent hours poring over the Galactic Accords and the seemingly endless screens of commentary, looking for support for intervention. It cut into his daily and hourly work of meeting with ex-troopers, reading and synthesizing reports from scores of worlds, trying to calculate what can be done and who can do it. Since both of these tasks were boring and often depressing, he told Poe about Tuve, how quick they were and how eager and how kind, how unimaginable they would have been to their stormtrooper parent before the end of the war.

Poe listened, but he never lost that strained and tired look. They turned to each other with eagerness at the end of each day, but if things weren't going well Poe was more likely than usual to roll away and give up on the whole situation, saying, “Want me to jack you off? Happy to,” but not sounding happy, sounding _dutiful,_ in a way that made Finn lose his hard-on without ever losing his desire. Sometimes he took care of himself later, on the other side of the bed, as still and silent as possible, like when he'd touch himself in barracks before he even knew that Poe existed.

And so Finn pulled away too, drew into himself.

He didn't understand what was happening to them. It had never happened before. Sure, there'd been times when one or the other of them was-- “offline,” Poe called it sometimes, after a death or a loss or a failure. But they were always each other's refuge then, each taking turns bringing the other one back to himself, through tenderness or intensity or silence. They'd argued plenty of times over the best course of action, on a mission or about how to reach out to someone who was grieving, but they'd always come to a resolution, because they were never each other's enemy—there were always more enemies out there, concrete or abstract, and it was better to meet them together.

“Enemies” seemed too strong, and as Finn added insulation to the apartment windows for the winter he scolded himself for being melodramatic, but what were they, if they were at odds about something as important as this? He couldn't figure out how to give Poe what he wanted—and it seemed stupid, inane, that his reason for wanting to protect thousands of people and reshape the entire galactic government was that he wanted to make Poe happy. Wanted not to _disappoint_ him. But he also wanted to do his own work, to keep his own promises, to advocate as far as he was able for the people he'd promised to stand with. He didn't want to use his skills, his energy, his time and his love trying to push a downed star destroyer aside with his own weight.

He couldn't see a way for this to change. Poe wasn't going to stop wanting what was right, and he wasn't going to be able to give it to him. He couldn't imagine living like this for the rest of their lives, and he couldn't imagine being apart—not apart the way they often were, doing the things that made them glad to be together again. Never returning to one another, never again coming home.

When Poe announced that he was going back to Kjalla, Finn wasn't surprised. He was frightened, but he kept the fear out of his voice when he said, “I know you've been thinking about it. What are you gonna do there?”

Poe shrugged. “What I do. Listen, ask questions. Try to help people toward what they actually want.”

“It's gonna be more dangerous this time,” Finn said. “You don't usually go back to places. Does the planetary government--” He stopped, because Poe was looking impatient, and he was right, Finn hadn't gotten protective like this for a while and just because whatever was happening to them was happening didn't mean it was good for him to start again. “Sorry,” Finn said. “I know you know what you're doing.”

Poe's expression softened, and for a moment Finn thought this could be the breaking of their impasse, especially when Poe reached over and used Finn's chin to draw their faces close. But the kiss was light, and Poe got up abruptly, saying, “Communications there are pretty bad right now, I wanna try once more to get through before I leave.”

They lay together that night, Finn's chest to Poe's back, his lips pressed to the nape of Poe's neck. He said, “Send word if you can.”

“I will.”

“If you--” he hesitated. He'd never offered this before, but: “If you need me to come there,” he said. “Even if I'm in sessions or whatever, if you need me and you can get word out--”

“I will,” Poe said again, but his voice was distant, and Finn knew he wouldn't, knew that this wasn't what Poe wanted from him, wasn't how Poe thought he could be useful. He gave up and tried to relax his muscles one by one while still keeping Poe wrapped in his arms.

Poe was gone for nearly two months with only one laconic message: _OK so far love you_. Finn spent most of the time preparing his approach to his second group of possible allies, and Tomorrow had to remind him twice of other measures they were supposed to be pushing forward. He spent the rest of them on the desert planet where Parliament was convening this time, his mouth perpetually dry to the point where he forgot what he was saying during a speech.

“You need to get your shit together,” Rusty said, not unkindly, sitting him down in their lodgings and setting out a bottle and three cups.

“I want some too,” Tuve said.

“You're too young,” Tomorrow said, filling his own cup. “There's abari juice in the conservator. Finn, nobody's saying this intervention stuff isn't important. We're not even saying it's a bad idea. But you got people counting on you to make a way for them to do their work, you know?”

“I know,” Finn said. “I get it.” He silenced his urge to justify, to explain; they were right, and there was no more to say about it, and it didn't matter that his heart was aching, that he didn't know if Poe was still alive, if Poe still loved him, that either way their last night together might have already happened. Or it did matter, but not for this.

“Getting it is good,” Rusty said, “but we need you to actually _do_ it.” He spoiled the severity by grinning. “Remember when you told me that? When I was just a little snotrag like Tuve here?”

“Now you're a big snotrag,” Tuve said, making a long arm for the bottle and pouring a slug into their abari juice, with Rusty's grab a little too slow to stop them. They patted Finn's arm with their free hand and looked at him with earnest eyes: “Let's talk about the measure for the elders before we get too drunk.”

Finn's heart clutched. They were trying to be a grownup, and it was because he wasn't. “Good idea,” he said. “We have the proposal from Idor and the one from Kanatka, let's look at those side by side. And I want the medical reports too, Rusty, you have those?”

The next day, only faintly hung over, he stood and made his case, _their_ case: as ex-troopers aged, which no one had ever expected them to get to do, it was becoming clear that conditioning, among its other effects, had made them more vulnerable to memory loss, attention deficit and personality degradation. He referred them to the medical reports from sanctuary towns and other settlements with high ex-trooper populations; he cited the spike of mindhealing training and prosthetics design after the most recent war, and suggested an allocation of both sentient and material resources to caring for people in this circumstance.

The measure was tabled for the next session with an injunction to gather more data, but he knew he'd managed to put the case well and lay the groundwork for next time, and he took Tomorrow and Rusty and Tuve out for dinner as a thank-you. The town had a strict light curfew (another carry-over from the war), so the windows of the eating-house were blacked out, but they had a viewing deck where you could step out with your drink and see the stars, not veiled by smoke or any moisture in the air or even an excess of other light. They hung big and multitudinous and close in the stark desert night.

A couple of times on this trip he thought it might be happening to him: he'd missed remarks and nuances, he'd lost the thread of his thoughts, he'd been tongue-tied and slow to react. But he'd done well today. The problem wasn't the substance of his mind: it was what he was thinking about.

Any second now, they'd come out to see where he was and if he was okay. He looked up, but he couldn't read the sky well enough to know if Kjalla's sun was in his line of sight. His second attempt at getting support for intervention was scheduled for the next day.

“It's the right thing to do,” he said out loud, tasting the words and feeling foolish, practicing, “sort of. And I'm not gonna do it.”

“Do what?” said Tuve at his shoulder. “They brought us our food, if you wanna come eat it.”

 

*

 

Poe was still away when he got home. He unwrapped a protein bar and ate it. A message was waiting for him: an invitation to Roel, to celebrate the sanctuary town's continued existence. It was in the sonorous ceremonial language he remembers from attending services in the town, and he wondered who wrote it, how the town's voice might have changed along with the town's population. It's in ten days or so; plenty of time to get there.

He kept up with his practice and his work for a few days, his decision feeling like a lump of ore in his chest. He didn't like knowing something about himself that Poe didn't know; he didn't like it that half a galaxy away, Poe thought he was trying when he knew he'd stopped. But there was nothing he could do about it except wait till Poe came home.

He did come home, dirty and worn and unshaven, stinking like a livestock transport and with the bones showing painfully in his hands. Finn kissed him and reconstituted some soup for him, helped him get clean and got him to bed. Poe clung to his hand when he tried to lower the lights and leave, so he stayed.

“Whenever you're ready to talk about it,” he said the next afternoon, when Poe came into the living area of the apartment.

“Not yet,” Poe said. “But thanks.” He walked through without touching Finn's shoulder at all and out onto their tiny balcony.

He didn't talk about it at dinner, and he didn't talk about it in the morning. This wasn't unusual after a call that went badly, but combined with how they'd been recently it seemed to fill the apartment with a thick silence. Finn's decision was starting to feel more and more like a secret. But Poe seemed so brittle, and Finn was afraid. Instead he showed Poe the comm from Roel. “I would like to go,” he said, “and I'd have to leave soon, but you just got back and if you want me to stay--”

Poe took a minute to come back from wherever he was. “I could fly you there,” he said. “I can borrow something a little bigger from Quarell, he owes me. If it's the kind of thing other people can come to.”

“It is, yeah, of course it is. Would you—want to, though? Leave again so soon?”

“Got nothing to do here. And I need a break, I don't want to need one but I need one.” A beat, another. Poe said, “I assume you'd tell me if you had any luck with the Parliament.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “I didn't.” He took a deep breath. “I'm not gonna try anymore,” he said. “It makes me bad at everything else I have to do, and I don't think I can get it to work. Work the way it would need to.”

Poe was still, silent and still, red spots rising over his cheekbones, just visible above the beard—almost entirely gray now, so he usually shaved it, saying he didn't want to look like old Skywalker.

“It doesn't mean nothing will work,” Finn said. “It means _that_ won't work. I'm gonna keep trying to think of something that might--”

“Stop talking about it _working,”_ Poe said in a low tone that was worse than a shout. “It's not a law, or a fucking amendment, it's people, it's people dying for other people's stupid reasons, it's everything we wanted to stop, you can't just not _try--_ ” He stopped himself, closed his lips tight.

(Days later, Finn remembers and feels again the chill that seeped through his body as they sat there, staring at each other.)

“I can,” he said. “I tried, and I can stop trying. You don't have to take me to Roel, I'll figure out a way to get there.”

“I can take you,” Poe said.

A four-day flight in a borrowed craft, and they didn't talk or touch the whole way there.

 

*

 

The dim red nightlights are lit, and the vats of savory porridge are set aside for the morning. People have stumbled off to their own or other people's beds, after making sure that children and elders have someplace comfortable to sleep. The city of Roel is quiet. If they looked out the window, they'd see lights at the hospital, the 24-hour creches and the water-treatment plant, and a few lights from houses on the hillsides where people are up early to do shift work or care for sick family.

Poe is just an outline in the nightlight, stooped to tuck his guitar into its case and slide the case under a bench, the red glow not sharp enough to catch on any of his features.

“They gave me my old room,” Finn says, and stands, grunting with the effort. He hadn't realized what sitting like that for hours, keeping still so baby Saana could sleep, was doing to his back. “Probably kicked someone out of it. If you wanna sleep somewhere else--”

Poe walks to him. Doesn't reach out, but stands in front of him, head bent. “What I want to do is apologize,” he says. “And sleep with—where you sleep. And stay with you. Finn.”

Finn wants to reach for him, draw him close, kiss him, but not yet. He says, “Follow me,” and they go up in the lift, down the hall, muscle memory springing to life in his calves and the turn of his shoulders. He keys the room open. Even the bed is the same. He sits down on it, takes off his shoes—they would've been boots, last time. Poe is still standing, like he's not sure of his welcome.

Finn says, “I'm sorry too. Lie next to me.”

They lie side by side in the dark, fully dressed except for their shoes. Finn takes Poe's hand and folds it against his own chest. Poe says, “I just—I can never do enough. I hate it that I can never be enough, no matter what I do, I can't stop it.”

Finn says, “It felt like I couldn't be enough either. For you. I know that's stupid, but that's what I kept thinking about--”

“I was disappointed in me, more than you.”

“You can be disappointed in me. I gave up before I tried everything, maybe I could've pushed until something happened," though he still doesn't think so. "And I didn't know how to get you to stop without asking you to stop being you. I don't want that. I love how you are. But I want it to be okay for us to rest. Even when things are terrible, even when we know that—we've done a lot, Poe, for a long time.”

“I don't know if I can,” Poe says, “but you can, and I promise I won't—I'm so stupid, Finn, I'm so sorry, I love you so much.”

“Rest with me,” Finn says, bringing Poe's hand to his lips, “rest with me,” kissing the back and the palm and each finger, tugging on Poe's arm gently to bring Poe over on top of him. Too light, his hipbones jabbing, but he settles and stays, kisses Finn's forehead and his mouth, sinks into him.

They let the night be slow. Every so often they adjust to lose another piece of clothing, when it becomes too impossible to not be touching just that little bit more. “What made you decide,” Finn asks at one point, not really caring because Poe is sliding against him, shifting against him perfectly, and Poe says, “I don't know, I just looked over at you and you were talking to, who was that, Ottilie and Tenten, I think, and you just became yourself to me again, I just—remembered. That you're you and not, you know, my enemy. I _recognized_ you.”

“How do you know their names, shit, you met them what, once twenty years ago? You're amazing. You know you amaze me?”

“Still, huh?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, “still,” and angles his hips up, grinding just a little, hands laced just above Poe's ass and pulling him down—they're down to their drawers at this point and he says, “I wanna take these off but I don't wanna let go of you.”

“Sometimes you have to choose,” Poe says, and the laugh that Finn had thought he might never hear again is back in his voice. Finn knows he should pick it up and run with it, keep it going, but he says instead, “I choose you,” and Poe's mouth falls on his, breathing into him, half-laugh, half-moan. They lose the drawers at some point, come one after the other and keep touching, losing their breath and finding it again, lapsing finally into sleep with Poe's head bent into the crook of Finn's neck as it starts to get light.

 

 

 


End file.
